


I live a life of letting go

by threedices



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst and Tragedy, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Child Death, Depression, Eggpreg, F/M, Good Lotor (Voltron), Grief/Mourning, Implied Mpreg, Lotor (Voltron) Has Issues, Medical Experimentation, Mentioned Haggar (Voltron), Minor Allura/Lotor (Voltron), Mutilation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Allura/Lotor (Voltron), Past Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Tragic Romance, Unethical Experimentation, VLD Angst Bang 2019, destruction of those eggs feeling like child death to the parents, making Ven'tar part of an egg laying species, minor Matt Holt & Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:21:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21807343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threedices/pseuds/threedices
Summary: Lotor was married once, but he and Ven'tar got seperated by Zarkon.Haggar took care of removing the eggs holding their unborn children.After the battle against Lotor, Voltron finds Ven'tar, frozen and forgotten in one of Haggar's labs.Ven'tar wakes alone, with Lotor gone and hated.Unable to connect to this new world, Ven'tar merely exists, until they encounter the Sinclince ship, which is all that's left of him.
Relationships: Lotor/Ven'tar (Voltron)
Kudos: 17
Collections: VLD Angst Bang 2019





	I live a life of letting go

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the VLD Angst bang mods and discord for helping me through this and for PookElucy for being so nice to a bang newbie!  
> I couldn't have done it without that support.  
> Special thanks for mer_maider for looking it over and alleviating my case of nerves and the Ven'tor discord for keeping the ship alive and making me love those two.
> 
> Link to the art is [here](https://pookelucy.tumblr.com/post/189706278466/pookelucy-art-she-starts-to-cut-him-open-he), on Tumblr.

The mining colony is the first assignment his father has ever given him.

The planet is beautiful and the people are kind, even though he is sent by their invader. He has never been as happy in the empire.

Right now, Lotor's desk is swamped with work.

The inspection will be soon.

It's a knife at his throat he can't get rid of, unfortunately.

He has been here long enough to care for these people, to feel at home among them.  
Deep down to his bones, Lotor knows that everything he has achieved here will depend on that next meeting with his father.

If he cannot protect them, then what has it all been worth?

He is so occupied with his work and his worries that he doesn't hear Ven'tar come in, at first.

"You work too hard. Take a break, beloved."

He raises his head and breath catches.  
In the sunlight streaming in from the wide windows, she is a vision.

With her by his side he would never have come as far.

Ven'tar looks unbelievable fond when he doesn’t answer.  
Lotor answers her smile in kind, purely on instinct.

"I can't stop now." He looks down at the pads and notes strewn across his desk and sighs.  
Still so much to do.  
So much to do, so many things that can go wrong.

"A small break won't hurt."

He looks up to catch a playful glint in Ven'tar's eyes.

"I have something for you. For all of us."

Her eyes go to his stomach and his hand lands there without conscious thought.

He gives in and they decide to relocate to their living room.

"It's a common practice for new parents," Ven'tar tells him, her hands careful when she unwraps the small package.

Lotor finds swallowing difficult around the lump lodged in his throat and instead inspects the device.

It's a shade of green common in the colouring of Ven'tar's people and formed in the likeness of a leaf.

"We call it a memory recorder. It can store video and sound, as a message for the children."  
Ven'tar's voice is soft and hushed.

Lotor exhales slowly and dares to lean on her.  
If he doesn't have time for this now, when will he ever?  
"That's... Let's do this."

Ven'tar smiles brightly and kisses his nose.

He makes a show of wrinkling it, which always makes her laugh.

Her hand is soft and warm around his own.

Lotor isn't ready to let her go.

They record exactly one message together, for their future children, full of laughter and love and a fragile hope for the future.

Lotor should have known it cannot last.

They fulfil all the set goals, all the things his father and the empire demands and it is still not enough.

He displeases his father.  
Zarkon orders the witch to knock him out.

Later, Lotor will obsessively go over what they, what he, could have done differently.

Once he wakes, Lotor is too disoriented to think.

His first thought is Ven'tar, his second the babies.

He can't check for either, bound as he is.

Haggar stands ready to begin her work.

If she has noticed that he is aware, she does not care.

She starts to cut him open.

He makes a choking sound, but the drugs are strong enough to mute him.

"Bring the container." She gives orders, maybe to a sentry, but Lotor's vision is limited.

When she scoops out the eggs, he barely feels it, but panic starts to set in.  
The babies!  
They are not ready yet, still too undeveloped to survive.

"Take a sample. Flush the rest."

He might make a sound, when he struggles against the bounds, he might not.  
One way or another he catches the witch's attention.  
She looks down, dispassionately.

"Another dose of sedation."

He never finds out what she does with his children.

Ven'tar goes with Lotor to face the emperor and it's one of the most nerve-racking things she's ever done.  
The emperor is cold and harsh, where Lotor is kind and considerate.

Zarkon doesn't listen to Lotor's imploring, not satisfied with what they have managed in the time Lotor was here.

Lotor's anger and desperation is palpable and makes her heart ache, but for Zarkon it is merely a sign of Lotor's weaknesses.

Ven'tar hates that they have to live on his mercy.

Zarkon's mercy doesn't last nearly long enough.

Ven'tar is dragged away when Lotor falls.  
Her call for him echoes, but remains unheard.  
That's the last time she sees him.

Lotor is still shaken when his father sends him into exile.

He is allowed to leave on his ship.

He only has the clothes on his back and the memory device he has taken along to the meeting, in a fit of hope and sentiment.  
He can barely breathe through the grief that fills him.

After the numbness fades, he feels hollow and empty.  
The eggs, the babies, and Ven'tar all gone.

In the time that follows, Lotor uses the memory device as a crutch.  
At first, he only records his pitiful apologies, because he can't bear to look at how happy Ven'tar was, how alive.

As time goes on and the crushing loneliness of his exile looms over him, he takes comfort in the spectre of what they had.

If he cries more often than not, no one is there to see it.

Ven'tar loses her freedom and her wings.

Haggar briefly operates on her, callous and disinterested, before turning to other endeavours.

"Store her until I have need of her again."

Ven'tar is frozen and left behind.

The loss of Ven'tar, their children and the planet he had begun to call home is a slow-healing wound, even hundreds of decaphoebs later.

The horror of all those deaths drive him, haunt him.  
He can't let it happen again.

But Lotor has no power to stop the empire.  
Not yet.

Still, there is hope.  
Not every Altean died with the planet.  
It's a statistical impossibility.  
Lotor searches for them, with the persistence of the truly desperate.

He pours what's left of his heart into hiding them, saving them.

And if he tries to find out what he can about Oriande from them, who can fault him for it?

He kills his father.  
He falls in love.  
In roughly that order.

Allura is amazing, regal and strong and everything Altean made flesh.  
She doesn't trust him, even when he offers them his knowledge of the empire.

Lotor understands, but he still fights it.  
He wants her to see him as worthy.  
Maybe he will be worthy of forgiveness, then.

He doesn't expect to fall for her, but it seems inevitable.  
It was all too good to be his, though.  
When he loses her trust, the only comfort he has, is, that he ever had it to begin with.  
It still hurts like breathing glass.

Allura feels her heart break when he doesn't deny Romelle's accusations.

His words barely register.  
He doesn't say no.  
He looks guilty.

Allura shakes off her love, like chains, and acts.  
Not for her heart but for her conscience.

Every happens too fast.

There's no time for regrets.  
Those come later, when it's all over and far too late.

She won't listen.  
Lotor never wanted it to end this way, but Allura won't curb her rage long enough to let him explain.

It's his father and the fire of the dying colony planet all over again.

The Quintessence burns through his veins.  
Makes it harder to think.

He remembers all the other times no one listened.

His father, the witch, the whole empire.  
Now it’s Allura.

How much easier it would be, if they were all gone.

The Quintessence burns through him.

He gives up, he gives in.

The aftermath of the battle is a quiet affair.

They are all exhausted.  
Allura feels more hollow than vindicated.

She goes through the motions of steering the castleship and hopes no one will ask any questions.

The Blades send a message of traces of communication logs about Lotor, a lab and Haggar’s involvement.

“It’s old,” Keith says, “but maybe it has something on the second colony.”

Matt hums. “Do you really think he would have worked together with her?”

But Allura is determined..”We will go looking.” Maybe she is a bit desperate too.

What they find is dust and old blood like rust on the operation tables.

There is still one pod operating.

The woman inside is green like moss and leaves, with tiny antennae with rounded tips.

She’s very pretty, Allura thinks, like delicate gowns and dancing shoes are pretty.

They get her out, Pidge and Hunk hacking the pod controls and Allura and Matt catching her as she fall.

There are tiny flecks of hoarfrost caught in her lashes when Ven’tar tries sluggishly to opens her eyes, but she is in someone’s arms, and she can make out just enough to see their white hair.

It makes her fall easier back into unconsciousness.

Her dizzy mind does not wonder why the armour is all wrong.

The next time she wakes, the princess and her advisor welcome her on the castle ship.  
“You are safe here. Lotor, Lotor is gone,” the princess tells her with a barest of hint of a stutter in her voice.  
She doesn’t say it directly, but her meaning is clear.  
Ven’tar cries, but it is not relief as the Alteans seem to think.  
She is too tired and too heartbroken to correct them.

Voltron is only a myth, something Lotor spoke of with wistfulness and hope.

Now the paladins of Voltron are a reality, involved in the war Lotor’s father brought the universe.

Ven'tar is weak and confused and she has nowhere left to go.  
They assure her that she can stay.

There’s more than just the woman in the cryopod in that abandoned lab.  
There are records of all the horrors Haggar inflicted on the unsuspecting she caught.

Matt hears screams when he goes to collect Pidge for dinner.  
Horrifying, blood-curdling screams.

He hurries and finds her going through the logs Haggar kept.

Ashen white in the face, but combing through the data logs and comparing them with the videos.

Matt wishes she wasn't so thorough.

"You don't have to do this to yourself."

"Kolivan said that there were hints that Lotor was in this lab. What if he has started here? Maybe he brought her Alteans to experiment on."

She continues.

Matt stays, because she's his sister and he worries for her.  
Even if the content of those videos turn his stomach and give him nightmares.

They find the logs about Lotor's presence in the lab.

They are near ancient, by the time stamp on them, and have not been looked at in ages.

Pidge is excited and looks no further than Lotor's name.

"I have to show the others."

With others she probably means Allura.  
She hasn't really been herself since they came back from the battle.

Matt has not known her for long, but even he can see how Lotor's betrayal and the fight affected Allura.

Pidge wants to fix things.  
For all of them.

Matt isn't quite sure showing them the logs will accomplish that, though.

The records involving Lotor aren't what they appear to be.

By the end of it, Matt feels sick to his stomach and actually sorry for Lotor.

"That's fake, right?" Lance mutters, helplessly staring, while Hunk stands up to leave when Haggar reaches into Lotor's guts.

They both look as sick as Matt feels and he thinks he hears Hunk retching once he's out of the room.

Allura looks like a statue, but her eyes glitter.  
She turns away when Haggar says to get rid of the eggs and Lotor's body strains against his restraints.

It's too late for that, though, isn't it? Matt thinks, crestfallen.  
Lotor's dead.  
Though, maybe she needs to cry for herself.

The video is still playing, with all of them transfixed and unable to stop watching, when their guest carefully makes her way into the room, slow and steady, until she sees the content of the video.

"Lotor." Her voice is hushed, filled with horror and heartache.

Pidge rips her attention from the screen to look at her.  
"You knew him,." she hisses accusation warring with anger in her voice.

Ven'tar doesn't seem to hear her. "What has she done to him? She, she hurt him. He doesn't deserve that."  
Her hands have gradually balled into fists and her voice has gone from anguish to anger.

"You knew him and you didn't tells us!"

"You never asked me!"

Pidge and Ven’tar are both angry and horrified.  
That's no way to have a discussion.

"Let's talk about this tomorrow, when we've all calmed down.," Matt says and hopes they'll listen.

"Matt is right. We should all rest." The princess says, her voice thick and strained, but with remarkable poise.  
Her back is ramrod straight.  
Allura leaves the room soon after, avoiding everyone's eyes.

Ven'tar seems to catch a glimpse of her face and softens.  
She leaves as well.

They actually sit down to have a civil discussion the next day.

"He was my husband. Those were my eggs." Ven'tar says, looking and sounding sad and tired.  
Exhausted.

It's strange for all of them.

"How does that even work? Lotor is, was, a guy, right?" Hunk says, wavering between embarrassed and curious.

Pidge says nothing, mouth pressed into a thin line. She has probably seen enough of Lotor’s innards by now.

"Married? " Allura sounds quietly devastated.

"Hey, that means he was a two timer as well, that jerk."  
Lance.

Before it can devolve further they get a call from Coran, then.

He has picked up t he Sincline ship on the sensors.

Allura's and Ven'tar's first thought is of Lotor.

They rush to confront him.  
Allura's heart beats in her throat.

"I want to come with you." Ven'tar hurries to follow, voice serious.

How can Allura deny her that.  
Ven'tar couldn't have known what he would become.

"All right."

They find him on a planet nearby, battling against Haggar.

Her dark magic arks like black lightning over the ship's hull.

Haggar gains the upper hand, right when they arrive.

The Sincline ship turns on them.

It only hesitates for a heartbeat before clawing into Blue's side.

"Let me out. I have to try to reach him," Ven'tar says.

Allura battles with the controls and herself, while trying to escape the claws and tail swipes of Sincline.  
"That's too dangerous."

"Please, let me do my part."

The Sincline ship crashes violently in Blue.

The cockpit lights flicker.

Allura relents.  
She steers Blue to land and open her maw.  
Ven'tar leaves her side, not looking back in her hurry to reach him.

It's a nightmare.

Every day in this new world has been a nightmare so far.

Ven'tar tells Lotor, 'I love you. I miss you. Please stop,' and hopes it will be enough.

He listens.

The ship moves in stops and starts, the metal groaning while he fights off the witch's magic.

Ven'tar half remembers the stories he only barely believed about the witch's powers.

They must have been true.

And now he is fighting her for Ven'tar's sake.

When Ven'tar tells him, 'I won't leave you again' she means it.

The other lions circle around them.  
With Blue so damaged, they can't form Voltron.  
Allura asks them not to attack anyway.

"You could hit Ven'tar. She has done nothing to deserve all of this."

Ven'tar is successful.

The Sincline ship turns on Haggar.

Allura is pretty sure she doesn't even have time to scream.

Ven'tar doesn't turn her eyes away from Lotor's ship, when the other lions land.

The cockpit opens.  
She was waits, hands balled into fists and breath stuck in her lungs.

It's empty.  
The cockpit is empty.  
Lotor's gone.  
She's alone.

Ven'tar feels her world shatter into pieces.  
Again.  
Something in her breaks.

She falls to her knees and doesn't realize someone catches her.

It doesn't attack them anymore, so they can cautiously scan it.

The Sincline ship is different now.  
Almost like the lions.  
It seemingly has gained sentience in the Quintessence field.

But Lotor's spirit is inside it as well.  
Though, unlike Shiro, he resists Allura's attempts to extract him.

The ship doesn't let him go.  
They are merged too deeply.

It repels Allura when she tries again.

Ven'tar offers to try as well.

No one sees the despair so deeply lodged in her soul.

"Let me in. I never wanted to leave you so alone. Let me make up for it." She reaches up towards the ship, arms wide open.

It's only a tic and Sincline kneels for her and opens up.  
Ven'tar smiles at it and steps inside.  
The cockpit closes behind her.

The ship rises and takes off, with Ven'tar inside.

No matter how much they search afterwards, they can't find the Sincline ship again.

"Maybe they are happier now." Allura wonders, while she watches Pidge build a new long scale sensor.

Pidge looks up at her, frowning. "Aren't you worried what he'll get up to?"

Allura thinks for a tic. "No," she says.

She smiles at Pidge and, with a sigh, Pidge leaves it be.

Later, after everything is more settled, Allura goes to visit the colony.

They are happy to see her and have only good things to say about Lotor.

It hurts to be reminded, but the pain is already beginning to dull.

There is a small house on New Altea, built by Lotor, to house him and his memories, when he stayed.

There's an ancient, still working memory device in the form of a leaf inside.

It's meant to be his memorial to Ven'tar.

The last entry goes like this:

Lotor, smiling, a bit sad, a bit hopeful.  
"I am leaving the device here with the Alteans, Ven'tar, in the hope that all of you are safe here."

His eyes are calm and tender.  
"I don't want to forget you, I want to share who you were to me.  
So they can know you, and keep you alive."

He chuckles.  
"In a way, I am leaving my heart here.  
What better promise can I make than that?  
For the future, which you never got to see, my love."

He says a string of words that the translator doesn't catch, won't translate.  
There's no one left to ask what it means, but Allura has a guess.

It's the love in his eyes.

The screen goes black.

Allura leaves with tears tracks down her face, her heart aching, but determined to do better.

She holds a small ceremony in their memory and helps to build a statue of Ven'tar to stand beside Lotor's.

Over time, children pick up the habit of making little sculptures of eggs, to lay them under the statues.

Somewhere far away, the Sincline ship explores the universe, safely holding their souls, never to be separated again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Backyard" from Of Monsters and Men.


End file.
